


the demon's in the DNA

by TeratoCybernetics



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Post-Sburb, gratuitous sci-fi references, oc as observer, pick whichever, pulp sci-fi au, space grifters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeratoCybernetics/pseuds/TeratoCybernetics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...You’re old enough to remember the last time the Demoness came through...but that was over a hundred sweeps ago. Her descendants? Far as you know, they fled their Ascension and the Empire to become tricksters, thieves and grifters...</p>
            </blockquote>





	the demon's in the DNA

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vulturer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulturer/gifts).



> Prompt: ' As of writing this, Damara's personality is still a mystery, but I don't actually care because I'm quite positive that she is super great. So! I would love to see a sort of time-trip fic (road-trip-ish, but outta whack because of shiny powers) where they travel (maybe on stolen motorcycles), book shady hotels, eat greasy drive-thru grubs, and people-watch. Aradia strikes me as a chipper and clever observer with a strange streak, and Damara's alt-self stabbed Doc Scratch with majyyk wands, so... an adventure with those two is bound to be fantastically interesting. The style could be slice-of-life, careless with a shade of bildungsroman, or even lightly experimental would be really cool...'
> 
> I saw this prompt, and it got into a head-on collision with my love of Firefly and Farscape and sci-fi in general, as well as the fact that I've been bouncing around the US eastern seaboard for a week, visiting family and sleeping in motels and being stuck in a car for far too long. Wrote most of this in the car, actually. Still wondering at where the line between 'reference' and 'crossover' is.

One of them is venomous, the other sweet. They’re both dangerous as fuck; it’s obvious from the moment they saunter into the Crossroads, post-docking. They’re the ghost girls you’ve been hearing about, psionics who talk to the dead and speak in tongues, hatchmates who pupated in the same cocoon, and if the rumours are true, hell on anyone who crosses them knowingly. They’re like two sketches of the same troll made by different artists; one loose and laid-back, a sweep of clacking bead-and-bone-decorated locks hanging to her leg-hinges. She wears well-loved boots under a worn skirt with edges like rough-brushed ink, like she’d never traded hard traveling on dirt roads for a little hunter-ship and the weirder ends of space. There’s a laser pistol at one hip, and a well-oiled whip hung on the other.

The other one’s slinky and slitherbeast-sleek, all that hair brushed straight and pinned in a knot by razor-edged stilletos, dressed in close-fitting things that hint at some kind of uniform, all of it cut way too high or low to ever be anything official. They’re both tall and raw-boned, they have identical sweeping-curled headgear and rust-red eyes that see straight through you.

You know better than to mistake them for anything ordinary; the sweet one smiles at you, and you slide their order across the bar, two bourbons, one with a splash of sour citrus, one with a single ripperwasp speared on a pick. She sets up their tab while the other one just _watches_ everything around her, eyes glowing softly beneath thick, red-tinted lashes. You’re old enough to remember the last time the Demoness came through. You were there at the Kalish front when she appeared like death itself, like straight vacuum mattered for fuck-all, cutting through the defenses of both sides with a slash of garish multicoloured lightning, rending Battlestroyers and enemy ships alike in half with a flick of her wands. You’d been a Crotalinae pilot then, had survived only because you’d hung back rather than taking point, but that was over a hundred sweeps ago. Her descendants? Far as you know, they fled their Ascension and the Empire to become tricksters, thieves and grifters. Rumours speak of elaborate heists and ruins pilfered, all sorts of soldiers and officers seduced out of their valuables, their slaves freed, sometimes relieved of their lives. That they’ve had their stolen ship modded so that they’re both Helmsmen of a sort, rendering the unassuming little vessel unspeakably fast. You know from the docking manifest that it’s Lampyridae-class, and called the Corpse Party.

They stay in your rentblocks for a few weeks in what would be the eighth season cycle back at planetside, and you learn their names; Aradia and Damara. Neither of them seem to care much one way or the other about aged midbloods running a waystation on the edge of Alternian space and the uncharteds. No one ever really cares, though. Not even the rare ranking officers stopping through, as long as the food and drinks are good, and it’s not _too_ shady. You watch them play their games each night as the crowds pass through and you tend bar. One night it’s a Nebari official, genderless and ostentatious in head-to-toe woven platinum, fleeced for all they're worth. Not an hour after introducing herself, Damara’s draped herself over them, one hand down their pants, the other in their wallet, and no doubt whispering unmentionable things into their ear all the while. The girl has one hell of a mouth when she deigns to speak, she’d put any of your old fighter pilot buddies to shame.

Another night, you hear Aradia telling loud and drunken fortunes to a crew of trolls, yellow and ochre nerdlings in jumpsuits, all. From what you overhear, they’re out investigating the remnant of some kind of time anomaly. It destroyed a nearby station called Farpoint, and the Empress is keenly interested in harnessing the time fuckery involved. They down pitcher after pitcher of slug beer and she’s smiling especially at one of them, a gangly sharp-faced kid with mismatched glasses, while she flips the cards over and spectral light coils playfully around her horns. It’s an unguarded sort of expression, fond and razor-sad at the same time. Those two order shots when she finishes, and embrace awkwardly after downing them. You don’t hear what the kid’s future is, nor do you think you want to.

There’s a brawl, the end of the first week. Damara hits on a woman of a species you’re not familiar with. She’s got wild hair and an odd nubbly forehead, and she shouts every word as if she’s constantly trying to be heard across a battle. Her mate, who is bigger and even _more so_ in every sense, takes offense. Damara just grins, offers to lead both of them to her rentblock, and he snarls and hauls off. It never connects; he’s swept across the room by a wave of concussing psi, and that’s like a sign for everything else to erupt. It takes thirty goddamned seconds to cross the bar, but you get the pulse rifle out from beneath, and then you’re shouting at everyone to calm their tits and get to their fucking blocks before holes appear in places they maybe should not be. The source of the chaos has already disappeared, and everyone else clears out quickly. Or, almost everyone. Aradia and a pale hornless kid in dark glasses -a Sebacean, maybe, or a Terran?- insist on sticking around to help clean up, and you relent when you finally see the extent of the mess. They punctuate sweeping up glass with volleys of amazingly awful jokes at one another, rapid-fire like they’ve done it a million times, like a reunion of frontline soldiers, and you find yourself laughing until you cry by the end of it, all irritation forgotten. You give them each a pint of one of the better beers for their efforts, get one for yourself, and all of you share them over a friendly round of Worst Space Story Ever before everyone departs for their respective blocks. Both of your drinking companions have far too many stories to tell for their young faces. Somehow, they’ve _seen_ shit.

Somewhere around the middle of their stay, they find themselves at loose ends, three whole nights of fuckall in terms of crowds passing through, no one in the bar but those two and a surly-looking trio of Luxons with a cargo vessel, and crossing Luxons is neither easy or advisable. The third night of this fallow period, you wonder where they’ve gotten off to, and find them in a dark corner. Aradia’s straddling a seated Damara, burying any sight of her and most of what they’re doing in a cascade of dreads. You smell warm blood and the wine Damara had bought earlier when you pass, but they’re both laughing occasionally, conversing too low to hear, punctuated by the occasional throaty growl. They’ve got their hands up one another’s shirts and skirts, and you have no fucking clue what quadrant it qualifies as. You’ve been around long enough to know it’s probably boredom, pure and simple, and to hell with quadrants. Something about possessing that short of a lifespan makes the need to _live_ that much more apparent. They go to their block early that night, and wake late and hungry the next evening.

Two weeks in and closing in on morning, a pair of highbloods dock and debark. They’re both violet, with the rough-edged look of Subjugglator-trained specialists rather than the polished conceit of officers. The little female _almost_ has fins, the male is tall and angular and uses far too many ten-caegar words. They both order gin and tonics without giving you a second glance; you’re not their quarry. You’re fairly certain they’re there to retrieve the rustbloods, for a certain and potentially messy value of 'retrieve’, and you wait with some apprehension for the shitstorm to descend once they sight one another across the room. It never does. The hunters are maybe a little too rough-edged, young and too easily distracted by a warm body and a pretty set of horns. Each is accosted by one of the ghost girls after their second round comes out, and you instead get to watch the girls buy drink after drink for the pair, eventually turning the whole affair into a giggling, indiscriminate tangle of limbs and horns and flashing teeth. When Aradia suggests going to _their_ rentblock instead of her own, you have a pretty good idea of how this is going to end. It will probably be a fuckload of fun for all involved, but if the hunters survive, it will likely be with lightened pockets and absolutely no hope of ever catching up to them. They still haven’t come back out when you close everything up and go to sleep.

You get up at what would be sunset, were there a sun, scrape off and shower before dressing and stumbling towards the food preparation block. You grind coffee and wait for enough to brew for you to take some before assembling your own breakfast from leftovers. It's part of the evening routine, as is going over the books while the first-shift Ood work on starting the communal breakfast for your customers. The girls left in the late of the day, if docking records are any indication. Their tab is paid in full along with a tip, and there’s a note attached to the transfer of credits. You click on the attached note to open it, blinking and sipping on coffee.

AA: maybe call th0se tw0 a mediliquidat0r? 0r n0t, it’s up t0 y0u, they might be 0kay with0ut. the tip’s f0r the mess and s0me t0wels, we didn’t exactly have time f0r laundry. 0u0

All you can really find it in you to do is laugh and punch in the comms' code for a subspace line out.


End file.
